CHAPTER XI.
Alexander Crosses the Hellespont and Visits Troy.
Having settled these affairs, he returned into Macedonia. He then offered to the Olympian Zeus the sacrifice which had been instituted by Archelaus,[1] and had been customary up to that time; and he celebrated the public contest of the Olympic games at Aegae.[2] It is said that he also held a public contest in honour of the Muses. At this time it was reported that the statue of Orpheus, son of Oeagrus the Thracian, which was in Pieris,[3] sweated incessantly.[4] Various were the explanations of this prodigy given by the soothsayers; but Aristander,[5] a man of Telmissus, a soothsayer, bade Alexander take courage; for he said it was evident from this that there would be much labour for the epic and lyric poets, and for the writers of odes, to compose and sing about Alexander and his achievements.
(B.C. 334.) At the beginning of the spring he marched towards the Hellespont, entrusting the affairs of Macedonia and Greece to Antipater. He led not much above
- ↑ Archelaus was king of Macedonia from B.C. 413-399. He improved the internal arrangements of his kingdom, and patronised art and literature. He induced the tragic poets, Euripides and Agathon, as well as the epic poet Choerilus, to visit him; and treated Euripides especially with favour. He also invited Socrates, who declined the invitation.
- ↑ Aegae, or Edessa, was the earlier capital of Macedonia, and the burial place of its kings. Philip was murdered here, B.C. 336.
- ↑ A narrow strip of land in Macedonia, between the mouths of the Haliaomon and Penēus, the reputed home of Orpheus and the Muses.
- ↑ Cf. Apollonius Rhodius, iv. 1284; Livy, xxii. i.
- ↑ This man was the most noted soothsayer of his time. Telmissus was a city of Caria, celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants in divination. Cf. Arrian (Anab. i. 25, ii. 18, iii. 2, iii. 7, iii. 15, iv. 4, iv. 15); Herodotus, i. 78; and Cicero (De Divinatione, i. 41)
advising him not to rely on his Asiatic troops in the contest with Alexander, but to subsidize an army of Grecian mercenaries. See Curtius, iii. 5; Diodorus, xvii. 30.
